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I review books of all types, but my favorite genres are young adult, new adult, paranormal, urban fantasy, mysteries of all types, and horror. I also like memoir and some non-fiction. Please email me at rasberryswrlgirl (at) hotmail (dot) com if you have a proposal for a book review, guest post, interview or other type of promotional post for your book. My turn around time is anywhere from a week to a month depending on my class load. When you email me, I will let you know what kind of time frame I can work with at that time.

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Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Why I Love London by Guest Author HELEN SMITH

Why
I Love London

All my books are set in London, including
my latest, The Miracle Inspector, a dystopian novel thattakes place in the near
future. England has been partitioned and a big fence has been built around
London. Schools and theatres have been closed down and women are not allowed to
work outside the home. Parks are used like giant allotments to grow fruit and
vegetables, and sheep are herded down Piccadilly towards Green Park to graze.
It’s a kind of ghost town, with very few people on the streets unless they’re
members of the ruling elite, travelling in official cars. This is because women
are not allowed out of their homes unless they’re visiting members of their
family (leading to all sorts of subterfuge, with women claiming to be related
to each other so they can get out and about) and many of the men have been
dragged off to prison on trumped up charges.

The real London doesn’t have a big fence
around it, though it does sometimes feel as ifthe cityis functioning like a
separate nation state inside the UK, with people who live here only interested
in what’s happening in London, and identifying as Londoners rather than
English, British or (since many come from abroad) the nationality of their
country of origin. Some have a kind of dual nationality – they’re Londoners and they’re Jamaican. They’re Londoners and they’re Welsh or Scottish or Sri
Lankan or German.

But in all other respects, the dystopian
London I have created in The Miracle Inspector is very different from the real
London. The real London is a crowded place of intellectual and creative
freedom. It’s a vibrant, diverse, crazy, exciting place that’s great to live in
and fun to visit.

Though I was born here, I was raised
elsewhere in England when I was a child, and returned to claim it when I was
eighteen. I have considered living in
New York, San Francisco and Paris (which city-lover hasn’t?) and I lived for a
short while in Sydney, but I have never left London for longer than a year and
a half, and then only foran exciting adventure that took me traveling around
the world with my daughter when she was young.

One of the reasons I love London so much is
that I knew about it from literature before I lived here. Though it was
sometimes portrayed as dangerous and dirty, it was always an exciting place
full of people from all over the world, a centre for culture and a place of
freedom where inventiveness and creativity could flourish. Whatever you want,
London has it, whether it’s art and culture, restaurants, nightclubs, concerts,
parks, markets, beautiful buildings, history or(whether you want it or not,
let’s face it, you’re going to need it) employment. It’s an expensive city but
a lot of the entertainment is free, including all public art galleries and
museums, and there are cut-price tickets available for the theatres. Or you can
just walk around and look. It’s
dirty! (Why don’t people pick up their litter? Why do they drop it in the first
place?) But it’s beautiful.

Despite all the attractions it has to
offer, what makes London such a special place is the people. There are people
living and working here from every country in the world. Some have come to seek
their fortune, some have come to study, some have found love,
and some are seeking sanctuary. London is a city of immigrants – not just from
other countries, but from other parts of our country. There are Londoners who
were born and raised here, but still more, like me, have come to claim it. It
means that Londoners are not particularly friendly to visitors (we’re all
strangers here) nor unfriendly (it’s not my
city; it belongs to all of us).

London is exciting to write about because
of the landmarks and historical settings that are recognisable even to readers
who have never been here; because of the eccentricities and diversity of the
people; and because it’s constantly changing – pin it down, write about a
moment in time, and you find you have recorded a moment of history to add to
all the other literature about this amazing city.

London’s wonderful. Come and visit!

About the Author:

Helen Smith is a member of the Writers Guild of Great
Britain and English PEN. She traveled the world when her daughter was small,
doing all sorts of strange jobs to support them both – from cleaning motels to
working as a magician’s assistant – before returning to live in London where
she wrote her first novel which was published by Gollancz (part of the Hachette
Group).

She is the author of bestselling cult novel Alison Wonderland. She
writes novels, poetry, plays and screenplays and is the recipient of an Arts
Council of England Award. She’s a long-term supporter of the Medical Foundation
for the Victims of Torture and mentors members of an exiled writers group to
help them tell their stories.

The Miracle Inspector is a dystopian thriller set in
the near future. England has been partitioned and London is an oppressive place
where poetry has been forced underground, theatres and schools are shut, and
women are not allowed to work outside the home. A young couple, Lucas and
Angela, try to escape from London – with disastrous consequences.

“…this is an absolutely exceptional piece of fiction, a work of art
befitting the best in socially-conscious literature.”

– Journal of Always Reviews

“…Only occasionally does a piece of fiction leap out and demand immediate
cult status. Alison Wonderland is one.”

– The Times

“…Smith is gin-and-tonic funny.”

– Booklist

“Smith has a keen eye for material details, but her prose is lucid and
uncluttered by heavy description. Imagine a satire on Cool Britannia made by
the Coen Brothers.”